Hawaii
The WPA State Guides were written and compiled during the Great Depression to present a detailed history and description of each state. The Works Project Administration was formed to help create jobs for the millions of unemployed at the time. This endeavor, funded by the Federal Writing Project, produced hundreds of books and pamphlets informing people about major cities and counties. As a result, State Guides were created. The State Guides included essays about the states’ literature and art, their architecture and public transportation, their flora and fauna, and their industry and agriculture. The guides had facts that were geological, geographic, meteorological, ethnological, historical, political, sociological, and economical. This twenty-seven million dollar project gave thousands of writers and photographers work during the Great Depression and was a tremendous success.
Matt Weiland is a senior editor at W.W. Norton & Company. He has also worked at Ecco, HarperCollins, Granta Books, The New Press and even Columbia University Press. He founded his own imprint, Bell & Weiland. One of his most well known works is the bestselling book, State By State, A Panoramic Portrait of America, inspired by the WPA State Guides. This book is formed from personal essays written by fifty different people about each and every one of the fifty states. However, Weiland didn’t edit this book alone – he needed help from a friend and colleague, Sean Wilsey. Wilsey is a former editor of The New Yorker and currently is an editor at McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern. Weiland and Wilsey wanted to include pieces written by natives of the states, yet they also wanted essays written by people who were not natives of the state. They didn’t want it to be a contest about which state was better, but rather, they wanted to know, “…what makes one state different from another? What are each state’s particularities and idiosyncrasies, their prejudices and biases, their beauty marks and moles, their cadences and jokes?” They wanted “a book that captures something essential, something fundamental and distinctive about each state.” They wanted personal stories that were able to truly “capture the essence of the place.”
Out of all the fifty United States, Hawaii was the last to join our country in 1959, only 53 years ago. In 1898, William McKinley, our 25th president, annexed Hawaii to expand the growing country. Hawaii is a chain of islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean; it was made from various undersea volcanoes in the ocean and its shape and size changes constantly. Hawaii is a gorgeous place that more than seven million people from all over the world visit yearly. Also known as the Rainbow State, these millions of people visit Hawaii to enjoy the tropical temperatures, beautiful beaches, rare volcanoes, and the magnificent rainbows.
A personal essay by Tara Bray Smith was the 11th essay (the essays are listed alphabetically) of State by State. Smith grew up in Hawaii, but later moved to the continental US for its educational opportunities. In her essay, Smith introduces Hawaii by describing her childhood and what it was like growing up there. She is especially interested in the forbidden island, Ni’ihau. This island was owned exclusively by a family named Robinson and only the Robinsons and the native Hawaiians were allowed to live on it. If any Ni’ihauans ever moved away, they would never be welcomed back. No visitor was ever allowed to enter the island and the only way off was by boat. Smith offers us insight about the island today, the island’s history, its economy, and its visitors: “Today Ni’ihau is the largest private island in the world. Around 150 people officially live there [and] the residents of Ni’ihau agree to follow a sober, moral lifestyle as defined by the family.”
Because Weiland and Wilsey wanted personal stories about experiences with the state, Smith tells about this one illegal adventure to the island she had with her father. She talks about swimming off a boat to the island, which was trespassing and completely forbidden. Not only were they breaking the law, but they ended up encountering a group of sharks, all gathered under their boat. During the time on Ni’ihau, they beachcombed together, finding human bones. The hundred-year-old skulls they found lying around on the beach under the sand were forbidden to be touched because “To touch a bone, especially a Hawaii’an one, disturbs its mana, the life force Hawaiians believe inhabits all things.”
Ni’ihau was so isolated that it didn’t even know about the bombing of Pearl Harbor just two hundred miles away. This isolation is the reason for the Ni’ihau Incident. A fighter plane that was returning to Japan from Pearl Harbor crash-landed onto Ni’ihau. The Japanese pilot of the plane convinced three Japanese men living on the island to take the entire island hostage. A brave group of Hawaiians eventually killed the pilot and won their island back. Some people say this occurrence was one of the few events that led up to the Japanese internment camps and Roosevelt’s executive order 9066. This order allowed military authorities to exclude anyone from anywhere without trial or hearing, and it was directed towards Japanese Americans. Thousands of American citizens who immigrated from Japan were forced to relocate to these camps, however, those who lived in Hawaii were excused because they were needed for labor at sugar plantations.
Hawaii is not only a beautiful and exotic place, it is also quite powerful, military-wise. “Up on Halawa Heights overlooking Pearl Harbor, sits the headquarters of PACOM, the biggest unified military command center in the history of the world.” Over sixty percent of the world’s surface, armed forces and population is monitored, patrolled and surveyed from there. In 2010, fifty percent of America’s attack submarine fleet moved from Virginia and Connecticut all the way to Hawaii. Hawaii today is “able to berth the entire U.S. Pacific Fleet.”
Smith always thought that Hawaii was special because it was unlike any other state. She proves that Hawaii is very different from the other states, especially culturally. Unlike any other state, Hawaii was a monarchy before it entered our nation. Hawaii was happily ruled by Queen Liliuokalani, but the US and much of Europe became imperialistic and started conquering other governments. Smith returned to Hawaii very recently out of “curiosity and self-reflexive fascination.” To her surprise, the trip to Ni’ihau was uneventful. The beaches were still beautiful and so was the view, but now you would observe an occasional, floating piece of plastic and instead of her relative’s farm, there were ethanol plantations.